


Kept Woman

by ahimsabitches



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, sharing cum, sharing tea
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-05-05 07:52:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5367203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iroh returns from the seige of Ba Sing Se and his voluntary leave of absence after the death of his son a broken man. He shows up at Harua's door looking for the peace only she and her tea can bring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gigarance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigarance/gifts).



> This is a fic for the beautiful and amazing Gigarance on Tumblr, who is my Iroh crush buddy. Sorry this took me so long! I hope it was worth the wait.

* * *

Two Agni-Kais. The day after Iroh returned from his lengthy leave of absence.

He knew exactly why each general challenged him; knew they were testing his mettle. Seeing if the Dragon of the West still had his fire. It was a question to which the whole nation wanted to know the answer, including his father, who presided over the duels held in his own massive red-gold throne room. Even though he won both, even though he nearly killed his brother general Yuto, he did not feel like General Iroh.

The dead, bloody weight of his son in his arms was the last true, real sensation Iroh remembered feeling. The past six months had been a muzzy blur of sunless days, starless nights, tasteless food, and greyed-out faces. He’d come back not because he was healed, but because he knew he must.

Now, with no son and heir, no wife, and no desire to take another, Iroh especially did not feel like Crown Prince Iroh.

Under Fire Lord Azulon’s molten gaze, he’d felt less than a man.

On legs that weighed more with each step, Iroh crossed the palace gardens under a cascade of pink cherry blossoms, gloriously backlit by the setting sun. Their beauty was utterly lost on him. His piercing golden eyes were set on the cobbled path before his plodding feet.

Suddenly, the path ended. At a door.

 _Her_ door.

* * *

Harua lifted her head from the simmering kettle at the three soft raps on the front door.

“Hm. Zeki’s early,” she murmured, wiping her hands on her apron. “I didn’t expect y—oh.” The man at the door was not the man who delivered her groceries. She pasted on a pleasant smile an instant before the face registered in her memory. Her hands flew to her mouth. “Prince Iroh! Great spirits, I didn’t _recognize_ you!”

In the three years they’d been apart, the Crown Prince seemed to have aged twenty. Grey, which only streaked his temples before, now covered his whole head. The lines that were just beginning to carve themselves into his cheeks and forehead were deep and craggy now. The eyes in which a golden fire had danced both impish and cruel, were now lightless and couched in deep pockets of bruise-colored flesh. Harua’s hands involuntarily clutched her heart.

“Oh, Prince. What happened to you?”

Iroh blinked, as if not comprehending her words. “May I come in?”

A hot flush filled Harua’s face.  “Of course! I’m so sorry, Prince.” She bowed hastily, touching her right fist to her left palm, and shuffled aside to make room for him. He stepped into the house like a man in a dream. A pang of sorrow squeezed Harua’s heart to look at him. What could have reduced the proud, strong son of fire to this?  “I, er. I made some tea. It’s genmaicha, but I know how much you like jasmine. Or… used to. I don’t know if...you…” She trailed off. Usually, Iroh was the one steering the ship of their interactions. Harua stepped close to the bentbacked hull that used to be her lover, cocked her head down a touch to look into his face. He seemed intensely interested in a point on the floor in front of his feet. “Prince…?”

“Please don’t call me that,” he said, his normally deep, resonant voice a husky whisper.

“Genera--”

“ _No,_ ” he barked. Harua, far from being startled by his outburst, was comforted. This was the Iroh she remembered. Demanding, imperious, rough at times. But gentle in his way. Harua had liked the juxtaposition.

“What shall I call you then?”

 He met her eyes.

* * *

Sweet, pliant, obliging Harua. His jasmine blossom. She had always done for him whatever he’d wanted, been for him whatever he’d needed. She had been wife, lover, daughter, mother, friend. All his, unquestionably giving whatever she had to give and asking for nothing in return. Looking at him with those soft doe-brown eyes that always asked _what can I do for you_ , she broke his heart all over again. He should have made her his wife, but she did not come from a noble, even a landed, family. He should have quit her, allowed her to take a husband that would actually provide for her, build her a home and a family and a future. But he’d kept her, kept her in a small house at the edge of the royal estate, out of eyeshot and out of mind of those who would and could question him.

For almost ten years he’d kept her. Three of those years she’d lived her isolated life, unsure if the man to whom she owed the roof over her head and the food in her belly would even return.

But there was no anger in her at his long leave. No resentment at his sudden unannounced presence. Part of Iroh wanted her to be angry with him, wanted her to demand something of him, to reassert herself in the blank space of those years, when he’d been at war and at mourning, and had thought of her not once. _Not once._

He threw his arms around her neck in a tight, needful hug. She tensed in surprise, then pressed herself to him in a return embrace as tight as his. He buried his face in the soft curve of her neck and inhaled the light sweet scent of her, the feeling of her, the _thereness_ of her.

“Just call me Iroh,” he said to her skin.

* * *

“Iroh,” she breathed, and held him tighter. She did not know what had happened to him, what had broken him. What she did know was that he needed her, and she would do all she possibly could for him. It was what he’d brought her here to do.

“Take what you need of me; ask what you will of me. My hands, my heart, are yours,” she’d intoned those many years ago, when he’d raised her up from a farmer’s orphan to a crown prince’s consort. It was a lonely life, but one she was absolutely _blessed_ to have. Instead of having what little she could coax from the earth stolen by men who claimed to be tax collectors, she had fresh fruits, vegetables and game from the Fire Lord’s own stocks brought to her weekly. Instead of sleeping on a cold stone floor, fearing burglars or worse, she slept in a feather bed with more pillows than she could count, safe behind a wall and a locked door, and ramparts beyond that.

And when her Prince came to her, he raised her up even further. In his bed she was queen, empress, _goddess_ of pleasure, which he drank like a dying man in a desert, which alone seemed to quench the searing heat baking off him every time he stepped through her door.

Prince Iroh had blessed her, given her so much. How could she possibly repay him? She’d try her best, like she always did.

“Prin—sorry. Iroh? What happened?” She asked him, still in the iron grip of his embrace. He squeezed her ribcage and made breathing a bit difficult, but she did not complain. Daren’t not.

“My son is dead.”

The words were muffled by her skin and the silk of her kimono, but they gutted her all the same. She’d never seen Lu Ten, but as much as Iroh talked about him as they lay in bed, she felt like she knew him. He’d shown her a picture of him: a handsome young man, steady and quiet, obedient and patient, who lived to please his father.

Grief, a sharper cut to her belly than she’d have thought, twisted in her and forced tears from her eyes. Grief for the son, but a deeper wrench for the father he’d left behind. She cupped the back of her prince’s head with one hand and kissed his temple.

 “I’m so sorry, my Prince,” she whispered to keep the crack out of her voice. She should not be the one weeping. He’d lost his son. She’d have to be strong for him now.

He squeezed her tighter, gripping handfuls of her kimono, the muscles in his arms starting to thrum. She held him through the quiet sobs and then the great wrenching one that he tore from the air, that drove him to his knees and brought her with him.

They stayed kneeled on the floor by the open door for a long time; Iroh curled into her chest, wetting the front of her kimono with his tears, and her with her kind hands and soft lips on him, her cheek resting against the sharp golden points of his royal headpiece.

* * *

He’d thought there were no more tears left in him. But seeing Harua, _feeling_ her, feeling something for the first time in _months,_ had brought it all back. His life as he’d known it had toppled and shattered that day in the killing fields. But Harua’s quiet hands and silky murmur had not changed. She was the one pillar of his life before that still stood.

To which he now clung for dear life.

“Why don’t I make us some jasmine tea?” Harua purred. Her voice was breathy, soft, musical and made him ache. He did not trust himself to speak. He’d just spent the last _way too long_ sobbing and snotting into her clothes like a damned _baby._ So he nodded, uncurling his fists from the back of her kimono, the green and blue silk one with horses and fish dancing across it. One of his favorites.  She used the overlong sleeve of it to gently wipe his eyes. “You can sit on the divan. I’ll bring the tea when it’s ready.”

She stood, her hand on his soggy cheek until the last moment, and headed for the kitchen.

The little house he’d converted from the gardener’s shed and given her was small but workable for her. It was one giant room partitioned in half. The first half was halved again into kitchen and living area; the other half was bedroom. The biggest room, suited to her purpose.

Her purpose.

He felt a pang again, less of grief, more of guilt. But he could no more set her free now than she could grow a beard and take his place as prince, general, Fire Lord.

He heard the gentle clatter of porcelain as she placed the set. Despite her lowly origin, she’d come to appreciate fine tea ware. And for good reason: her tea was the best he’d ever tasted. The best, he guessed, in all the four nations. Harua had come from a family of farmers, she’d claimed. Before her parents were killed, their jasmine crops had been about as profitable as their kumquats and melons. With quite a bit of prompting from him, she’d finally agreed to make her parents’ recipe.

 Iroh had never been much of a tea drinker; not, that was, until he’d tasted Harua’s tea. The jasmine had taken him over the moon, and every other flavor after that had been as delicious as she was. He’d asked to learn how to make her tea. She’d taught him. She’d also taught him something she hadn’t known she was teaching him: how to move slowly, to savor, to pause and, well, smell the tea, as it were.

And smell it he did. He inhaled the delicate floral scent wafting through the room and it squeezed more tears from his eyes. Jasmine. Jasmine was soft, was sweet, was home. Was Harua.

He rose gingerly, soreness from the fights already seeping into his muscles. His knees creaked protest after having been pressed on the hard wood of the floor for too long. He was getting old. The past three years had aged him, aged him more than the twenty before that.

Harua had her back to him, busy at the counter, pressing the fragrant mix of jasmine and herbs into the tea strainers. Though the voluminous folds of her kimono hid her body from him, he knew its curves well. At least, he did three years ago.

But if her body had aged like her face and her hands and her voice, it had not aged at all. And why would it have? She’d been here the whole time, whiling away the days doing…what? He shook his head to clear it. No use piling the guilt on any more. Stepping close to her, he wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. Her rich black hair was swept up in a thick bun, feathery strands whispering down her neck and temples. He pressed the side of his face to these, and she giggled, twitching her shoulder up.

“Your beard tickles.”

“I should shave it.” He hadn’t, not yet. Not in months.

“I like it like that.” She reached up with the hand that wasn’t holding a tea strainer and brushed a feather-light touch down the rough, wiry grey-streaked hair covering his cheek and chin. Though the hair on his head was nearly completely grey, there was still a decent amount of black in his beard. Hopefully it’d stay that way for a while.

“Maybe I will keep it like this. If you like it.”

“Do what pleases you, Prince,” she said demurely, then, with a flash of fear, “Sorry, Iroh.”

A corner of his mouth lifted up. “Don’t apologize. I’m… I’m the one that should be apologizing to you. For… leaving you this long.”

Harua turned to face him, eyes wide and worried. “Oh, no, Prince, no, never! You have nothing to apologize for. You were doing your duty; I can’t blame you for that. I missed you and worried about you, but you’re back now, and I’m happy. Not that I wasn’t before, but I…”

Those doebrown eyes, soft and liquid, set above a small, upturned nose and bowed, plush lips, drew him in like a magnet. He pressed his lips to hers, cupping her face in his hands. The sensation was as comforting as a hearth and as electric as a storm. Harua settled her arms around his neck, pressing her entire body to him and moaning a little against his mouth. He knew she would be willing to do anything, anywhere, anytime, and all he had to do was signal her. But right now, the comfort of her presence and the warmth of her skin on his was enough. So he kept his kiss chaste but deep. When he finally broke it, a slow, low flame burned in her eyes. “I missed you so much, my Prince.”

He lifted a corner of his mouth in a resigned smile. _So much for just Iroh. Old habits die hard._ “I missed you too, Harua.”

* * *

Her name carried on the deep, craggy rumble of his voice sent a blush to her cheeks and a delicious shiver down her spine. It settled deep and low in her.

At first, being Prince Iroh’s mistress had been frightening and a little painful. Her seventeenth birthday had just come and gone when he’d taken her, and Prince Iroh’s hot, rough, calloused hands were the first hands that had touched her in… _those places._ He’d done his best to be gentle, but his warrior’s paws better fitted around the curl of a flame than a curve of flesh.

Over the years, as her body tamed him, as his strength calloused her, she’d come to love his roughness. The bite of his nails in the thick of her hips, the feverish, grunting weight of him on top of her, the insistent, straining push of him inside her, became familiar, pleasurable, glorious. Now, at just shy of twenty-six, she knew exactly how to cant her hips, arch her back, bat her eyes to bring Crown Prince Iroh, First General of the Fire Nation Army, to his knees.

But the man before her, seeming to have shrunk in the past three years, wasn’t Crown Prince Iroh. Wasn’t First General Iroh.

She said his name. Just his name, hoping to spark in him the same glow she’d felt. But his grief for his son lay like a heavy cloak on his shoulders. She sighed and laid a kiss on the rolling lines of his forehead. “I’m so sorry.”

He inclined his head. “Thank you. Don’t let the tea oversteep.”

“It won’t.” She tapped her temple with a finger. “I’ve a good hourglass in here.”

* * *

 

He released her and she turned back to the tea. The living area of the small house was nothing more than a low, round table with a thick maroon skirt and two overstuffed settee pillows, plush and upholstered with lush red satin. The table had once sat in the house he’d shared with his wife. He settled himself on one of the pillows and roved his eyes over the scrolls and books scattered on the table. Most of them had to do with botany or teamaking, but he spied a Fire Nation history scroll and a war treatise, written by one of Iroh’s predecessors.

“You’re reading _On Warfare_?” he called around the wood-and-paper partition.

“Oh my, the table!” She scurried into the living room and scooped up the papers in one shiffling armful. “I’m so sorry; I didn’t clean up!”

Iroh chuckled. “You didn’t know I was coming.”

She trotted into the bedroom and he heard a rustling _shhhffff_ as she shed the load of paper and vellum. In quick, light steps she returned to the kitchen, retrieved the tea tray and set it down in front of him on the table. “There. Much better.”

“You’re reading _On Warfare_?” He asked again, curiosity nibbling at him.

She shrugged one graceful shoulder and placed his teacup, saucer and spoon in front of him. “I’ve read everything else in the palace library, says Zeki. It’s not exactly a riveting read, but it’s something. I’m learning, though.”

Iroh wasn’t sure he wanted her to learn what was in that tome. It held an account of the beginning of the hundred year war and his grandfather Sozin’s genocide of the Airbenders. Something even he, who came perilously close to genocide himself, could hardly bear to think about. “I’ll get you more books.”

Her grin was ebullient as she sat, legs folded demurely under her. “Will you? Oh _, thank you_ , Prin—Iroh. Mm, it’s going to be difficult to call you just Iroh.” She brought the steaming cup to her lips and blew the steam away gently. With his eyes, Iroh traced the intricate painted pattern of the green dragon writhing across her teacup as she drank.

Green for her, dragon for him.

Iroh raised his own cup and sipped.

Warm liquid and cool flavor slid down his throat and bloomed into peace in his belly. His tired eyes slipped closed and for once, for the first time in months, Lu Ten’s broken, bloody face was not waiting for him in the red-tinted darkness. He heaved a great sigh, breathing deep of a stillness in him, and let his back settle against the wall.

* * *

Harua watched him over the rim of her teacup and smiled to watch the tension drip off his shoulders. Oh, good. She’d let the tea do its work, then she would finish the job with her hands and her body, if he let her. Her prince’s grief was not a wound she could heal, but she would do her best to please him while she had him. If she could not reach into his chest and stitch his heart back whole, then at least she could offer momentary respite from the ragged pain.

They drank their tea in companionable silence, as they’d done before. Harua opened her mouth a few times to make polite conversation, but every question waiting behind her tongue carried a sharp edge that threatened to reopen the wounds she worked to close: where had he gone? What had he been doing? How long had he been gone and how long had he been back? How were his niece and nephew? Questions clamored and jostled behind her teeth, but it was not her place to ask. It was her place to be what he needed, and he did not need a prying, prattling wench riding him.

“More tea?” she asked, halfway up, suddenly needing to move else words would come pouring from her anyway.

"No,” he said and stopped her midstride. “Come here.” He raised one arm, indicating her place by the warm curve of his side. She did as she was told, snugging herself tight into him. She lay her head on his chest. His steady heartbeat, _ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum,_ massaged her ear. His beard tickled her forehead. The warm gusts of his breath, fragrant with jasmine, blessed her cheeks. The comforting weight of his arms around her stilled her as her tea had done him.

Here in her prince’s arms, she was safe and warm. Home. Where she belonged.

She wouldn’t ever say the words out loud. _Daren’t not._ But they were written on her mind anyway, sung in her bones, the brush of skin on skin, words behind words.

_I love you._

But she daren’t say it out loud.

* * *

Iroh’s wife had been as nervous as an unbroke filly, as nervous as Harua had been, when they first met. But unlike Harua, she’d never relaxed. Never really let him in. She’d been put off by the sight of his naked body and _scared_ by the sight of his erect cock. Several days of coaxing and wheedling through gritted teeth later, she had finally relented. But the love they made was quick, wooden and unsatisfying. Lu Ten had come along quickly, something they’d both counted as a blessing.

After that, he’d been called away to war.

The next time he saw his wife, she lay on her funeral pyre, skin splitting, fat melting, bones blacking in the flames that poured red and angry from the hands of the priests. Lu Ten, fresh out of his mother and squalling, wiggled in the crook of his father’s arm.

Such was the way of things. Of arranged marriages between sixteen-year-olds and thirty-year-olds. Of alliances forged behind closed doors, signed by lying hands, paths walked by unwilling feet.

And then Harua had caught his eye. Enough like his wife to give him pause; enough unlike her to intrigue him. His instincts had been right. After her guard was brought down and her maidenhead broken, she had become as supple and receptive and yielding as his wife had remained aloof, tepid, and rigid.

He, too, found his body and his tongue loosened in Harua’s presence. In response to her, yes, but more than that, he felt the great burden of his duty lifted. He’d married his wife, and she had given birth to his son, for duty to his Lord Father and their noble house. But there was nothing of duty about Harua. Quite the contrary. His father satisfied and his line secure in Lu Ten, Iroh could finally seek, and find, leisure and pleasure in Harua.

With pleasure came warmth; with familiarity came affection that ran deep and dangerously close to a buried, dormant thing deep in his brain that he could not afford to unearth.

He could not afford to say the words.

So he held her tighter and let his heart beat the cadence of her great worth back out to her.

She moved against him; spoke. “How long will you stay?”

Double victory at the Agni-Kais and a temporarily stalled Earth Kingdom takeover had bought him time. A day, two at most. “Tonight. Tomorrow morning. Long enough to have another cup of tea.”

So broad was her smile that he felt it through his robes. She murmured an appreciative purr and cuddled closer to him. “I knew I was saving that smoked duck for a good reason.” Mmm, duck. It was his turn to purr, the sound deep and resonant in his chest. Harua chuckled. “You rumble like a lion.”

“Were you planning to have the duck for dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow?” He asked her, his mind slowly shifting gears, shifting his desire for her from balm to spark.

“Whatever pleases you,” she sighed happily.

“Breakfast,” he said, dropping his voice back down to the deep, rocky rumble she loved so well, brushing his lips against her ear. “If we’re done with tea, I’d like to take you to bed.”

“I want nothing more,” she breathed and uncurled herself from his side. They stood together. The glow Iroh saw in her eyes nearly made him lose his balance. It was a fierce, demanding glow, hot and full of desire. Utterly unlike the demure, blushing Harua he thought he knew.

Then again, it had been three years for her. Unless she’d fallen into the burly arms of Azeki, the even-tempered but slightly dim-witted gardener that Iroh had conned into delivering Harua’s weekly ration. But he didn’t think so.

Regret pinged off the inside of his skull. Besieging the largest, most fortified city on earth didn’t exactly leave one much time to chase women, but there had been a steadier stream of refugees than he would have expected, crawling into his camp, willing to trade anything for safe passage out of the choking, starved city. Willing to trade their wives, daughters, mothers. He’d plucked the juiciest fruits for himself, used them as he’d pleased, then handed them back to his grinning, slavering soldiers.

Those memories he knew to be his, but their presence in his mind was sour and dark. General Iroh had been that man, done those things. He was General Iroh no more.

He shook his head to clear it. He had a woman in front of him now, a good woman, one that clearly still desired him despite all sense to the contrary.

With an amused smile, he realized Harua stood taller than him now. Not by much, but the passing years had worn him down while they’d risen her up from slight, willowy teenager to woman grown.

She cocked her head. “What’s funny?”

In answer, he scooped her into his arms. She peeped in surprise, which became a girlish titter that, from anyone else, would have annoyed him. But from her lips it was music. He strode into the oceanic dimness of the bedroom. The one window over the bed was curtained in turquoise silk. The thin fabric caught the last light of the setting sun and turned it cool and green. Inhaling deeply, Iroh could almost smell loamy forests and the crisp salt tang of the sea. He lay Harua on the bed, clothed in a similar shade of seagreen, and began to shed his robes, shed the reds and golds and maroons of his house so he could feel the cool seacolor on his skin.

“Let me,” Harua said, stepping off the bed and reaching for the golden ropes that belted his royal armor. She picked apart the knot with ease and grace, taking her sweet, slow time unwinding it from his waist. Taking her sweet, slow time turning circles around him, shedding his royal robes one layer at a time, her crisp brown eyes ever leaving his until she stood behind him. She slid her hands under the loose, thin tunic, the last layer left, and let it drip off his shoulders. It whispered to the floor and puddled at his feet. She swept his long hair away from the back of his neck and brushed her lips over the joint of his neck and back. A shivery spark slid down his spine from the site of her kiss and joined the embers catching into a flame deep in his belly. He breathed deep, searching for and finding reserves of self-control. Discipline, mindfulness and control were all things a firebender must possess in order to be a master, and Iroh prided himself on having them in abundance. They hadn’t necessarily governed other aspects of his being, at least not then. Not before the killing fields.

In an older time, he’d have had her against the wall, bent over the table, on the bed already. But tonight, he wanted to tarry, to delay gratification as long as possible, to let the spell Harua cast over him settle into his bones. To stop and smell the tea.

With slow and gentle hands, he undid the complicated knot that held her _obi_ closed. Slid the thick folds of it off her and she was naked before him in the cool blue dimness.

Woman grown indeed. Creamy, full breasts sat above a plump waist, curved deliciously into buxom hips and plump thighs. He had always preferred women with “substance”, as one of his colonels had put it. “More cushion for the pushin’,” the other had drawled lewdly. He clutched her to him, pressing his lips to hers, his cock hard between them.

* * *

 The years had not been kind to her prince. The thick cords of muscle that bunched and coiled under his skin had wilted some, and fat had padded his belly. But she loved it all the same, loved him all the same, and worshipped his body as she always had, touring it with her tongue and lips. He shivered when she nibbled his earlobe, biting just hard enough to hurt. Like he liked. She kissed down over the quickening pulse in his neck. His throat bobbed as he swallowed and she placed another little kiss there. She trailed her tongue down to his collarbone and replaced it with her teeth, nipping, grazing, making him shudder. Like he liked.

Normally just a few minutes of this would have had him in a frenzy, breath hot on her neck, hands gripping and pushing, body surging against and into hers. But he stood still, breathing deeply, eyes closed. His body wanted her; that much was clear. So why wasn’t he taking her?

“Is everything all right?” she whispered, hands roving lower.

When he opened his eyes, they seemed to be lit from within by molten gold. Her heart jumped. “It is now,” he said, his deep voice husky with need. He kissed her, flicking his tongue into her mouth. _Oh._ The strength ran out of her legs and she squirmed and moaned into his mouth, grinding her hips against his cock.

* * *

He tipped them toward the bed. She lay back, stretching her arms above her head, tipping her chin up, arching her back and opening her legs: the most wonderful invitation Iroh had ever been given. With her body she said to him, _This is mine to give and yours to take._ And it took much of his willpower to stop himself from taking, taking, taking all, hard and fast.

  _Not yet,_ he chided himself. _Slow. Slow and easy._ He climbed on the bed, straddling her, and wandered his tongue down the pale, delicate skin of her throat and over the drumbeat pulse there. He kissed it, not sure if his goal was to calm it or urge it faster. He reached the ridge of her collarbone and the lovely little dip in its center where it met the cords of her neck. He laid another kiss there, then traced the bone with his tongue all the way out to her shoulder. He returned to the middle with his teeth, gently grazing the skin over her collarbone. He was rewarded by another quiet little moan and an arch in her back. Iroh paused and took a quick inventory of her face: eyes dreamily closed, mouth slack open, roses in bloom high in her cheeks. Perfect. He returned to her body, lips and tongue flicking and whispering down the gentle valley between her small but lovely breasts. Unable to help himself, he closed his mouth over one nipple and rolled it between his teeth. Harua gasped and squirmed under him, her fists clenching and releasing around handfuls of the sheets. He grinned, feeling his cock throb and ache. He pursed his lips and blew a breath of cool air onto the nipple, which made a shiver ripple through her.  He treated the other nipple as reverently as the first, once warming his breath and then letting it cool, all the while meandering down the front of her body with his hand. Over the yielding mound of her breast, over the hard ridges of her ribs, over the smooth flatness of her belly, over the gentle rise of her hip, to the place he’d been longing to reach. But first, he caressed her thigh, feeling the muscles there bunch and relax. Then, with tender slowness, he slid his hand over the patch of dark hair between her legs and parted her lips with a finger.

Great spirits, she was _soaking wet._ It nearly drove him wild to pound his cock where his finger was, but he sucked in a calming lungful of air, again, again. Just the sight of her, bared there, bared for him, trusting and all his, filled him with desire so powerful it burned him from the inside. Half of him wanted to be a gentle, guiding lover, one that would bring her to orgasm again and again, showing her every curve, every line of the art that was pleasure. But half of him, pushing against the base of his brain and pulsing deep in his belly, cared only for his pleasure, his release. That dragon in him knew what it wanted, and what it wanted was there for the taking. So easy, so easy.

But he called up control from his fast-draining reserve and found her clit. She cried out, gasped and bucked under him. Had that been enough to trigger an orgasm? No, not yet. It had been so long since she’d felt someone else’s touch there, and the newness was a shock.

He swirled his finger around her clit, slowly, in large circles and small, and was rewarded by louder moans and more insistent squirms. He brought his fingers to his mouth and tasted her. Slightly salty, spicy and sweet. Delicious.

He wanted more.

He slid down her, kissing over the soft, supple skin of her chest and belly as he went, until he reached the patch of curly brown hair between her legs. Harua moaned loudly, winding a hand in his hair, as he gave her clit a long, delicious lick. Encouraged, he swirled and flicked his tongue over her clit, loving the moans, writhings and purrs she gave him. And loving the exotic taste of her just as much.

“Iroh,” she panted, her voice husky, “put your fingers inside.”  She showed him how to hold two fingers, palm up, like he was beckoning. “Keep licking. Both at the same time,” she breathed. He obliged. She groaned and gasped.

Harua wasn’t usually this… demanding. It didn’t bother him; quite the contrary. He found a new kind of pleasure in doing as he was told; subsuming his own pleasure for the sake of hers. He sucked her clit between his teeth and she gripped fistfuls of his hair.

“Yes, oh, _yes,”_ she moaned. “Oh, yes, my Prince, yes, ah, _aahh!”_

She yanked his hair and it hurt; her thighs squeezed his head and momentarily he could not breathe; but the hot slickness of her orgasm on his fingers and tongue and the lusty scream she gave were worth it and then some. He smiled into her dripping pussy and kept going, pulsing aftershocks through her as long as he could until she was a twitching, panting, gasping mess.

He sat up, licking her juices off his fingers with as much relish as the grease from a roast duck. The rapid heave and sigh of her chest below her slack-open mouth and dreamily closed eyes made him grin more. Perfect, ah, perfect. Exactly how every woman should look.

He crawled up her and kissed her. She grasped the sides of his head and licked herself off his lips and beard thirstily, mumbling.

“What?” he asked.

“Now, I want you now,” she breathed into his ear, her voice ragged and needful.

And that broke him. Those brown eyes, at once gentle and fiery. That curving, luscious body, trembling for need of him. He repositioned himself between her legs and leaned down to meet her lips with his as their bodies touched.

Then Iroh slid into her.

The feeling made them both gasp. Harua’s fingernails dug into Iroh’s back but he didn’t care.  Only the head of his cock was inside, and gods, she was _tight_. Waves of pleasure crashed through him. He shuddered and eased in a little more, burning up the last of his control in preventing himself from ramming it home. Harua’s breaths came in quick little gasps now.

He withdrew a little then thrust in again, biting his lip against the ball of hot desire building at the base of his belly. He glanced at her face. Her eyes burned. He felt an answering jolt in his cock, then threw his back into the next thrust. And, oh, he was buried to the hilt in her. Iroh began a slow and wonderful rhythm of thrusts.

It had been way too long. After only a few minutes, his whole body shook with the effort of containing his orgasm. He kept his eyes on Harua to try to distract himself, but the sight of her enraptured face, the feeling of her arms and legs wrapped around him, gripping him, pulling him into her, were, oh, too much, too much.

“Harua,” he panted, “I have to stop.” He pulled out of her.

* * *

_Oh no, what have I done? I’ve displeased him._ Harua sat up, eyes wide and fearful. “Is everything all right? Did I hurt you?”

He smiled through gritted teeth. “No. I’m just close.”

Harua cocked her head. “So why’d you stop? You could have kept going. You’ve already given me _so_ much pleasure. It’s your turn now.” She laid a hand on his bearded cheek, searching his face for signs of pain, grief, discomfort, anything. She saw none of that; only the intensity of his golden gaze, full of hunger and need, with a glitter of restrained violence flicking through it like the silver reflection of a fish in a pond. It was the look that had frightened her at first, that now she’d come to love. Heat and desire bloomed in her belly to see it. She pulled him into another deep, thirsty kiss, trying to trip the wire thrumming in him, bring him surging back into her. But he stayed where he was, hovering over her on his hands and knees. “Are you _sure_ you’re all right?”

Iroh chuckled deeply. “Yes, Harua. I don’t want to come yet. I want us to take our time. Slow and easy. I want us to enjoy it. Savor it.”

“But we already are. I know _you_ are.” She reached down and gave his rock-hard cock a gentle squeeze and pump. He twitched and coughed a breath out.

 _That was unlike me. Harua, what’s wrong with you? First you demand to be pleasured first, then you sass your Prince like this?_ “Sorry, Prince. Iroh.”

His laugh was louder this time, longer, deeper if it was possible. And his kiss was deep. “Never apologize for putting your hand there, unless it’s a fist and you’re punching it.” He eased off her and lay on his back beside her, pillowing his head with his hands. “Touch me. Put your hands on me.”

Harua blinked, blindsided. “Y-yes, Prince. But… where? How?”

“All over. Gently.” He heaved a sigh and closed his eyes.

Harua had been handed a map she knew well. It carried the topography of Iroh, the peaks and valleys of his likes and dislikes, the undulating lines of his pleasure. But the territory which faced her now, his body, bared for her, she had not trod.

Despite that, she mentally hitched her skirts up and began down the path in front of her. She reached out to him with both hands and let her fingers trace the angled, curving lines of his face, of his broad, flat nose, of his almond eyes, full lips, the shape of his jaw under his beard. Her fingers ghosted over the three parallel lines struck across his forehead. She leaned in and kissed each, her hair falling in twin black curtains over his face. He caught a lock of hair and inhaled the fragrance of the jasmine oil she used. “Mmmm,” he rumbled, and she smiled.

Down her fingers went, over his neck and chest, carpeted with salt-and-pepper hair and populated with scars. Several she knew; she’d asked for the story of every one.

That one on his collarbone from his brother Ozai, when they were children and playing at swords.

This one below his right nipple, a deeper, smaller divot, from a crossbow bolt in a battle. Which one, he hadn’t said. Thank spirits he’d been wearing armor.

The one on his left side, snaking all the way around his ribs. From a waterbender’s icy slice. How that one had bled, he’d said.

There were new scars now, pink and puckered, ones that she’d have to ask him about. None larger than the waterbender’s hit, thank the spirits. Running her hands and eyes over them, her heart swelled and broke at once. Her prince was strong, fierce, virile; the very essence of a warrior. A king. An emperor. And in her own small way, she was proud to be attached to him, even if no one in the world knew it. She, little orphan Harua, raised up by the grace of the gods to Iroh’s favor, had a place, however tiny and fleeting, in the noble heart that beat beneath his scarred breast. She lay the flat of her palm over the middle of his chest. Heat radiated from it like a hearth.

There, his heart. Beating, burning for his country, his house, his royal destiny, his lost son. Even if it didn’t beat for her, her own heart would burn with enough love for both of them. For him, her wounded prince, and her, the unworthy girl he’d chosen.

With a warm smile and a pulse of desire in her belly, she continued down over his barrel chest to the pillar that was his body. A rugged landscape of muscle had softened and filled in, but Harua knew what great strength still lay latent in him. She hoped to bring it out. And soon. She felt the warm drip of her own desire thread down the inside of her thigh, turning cool as it went. She enjoyed this new slowness, this drinking-in of him, but there was an animal in her, a bitch in heat, growling and slathering for want of a good rut.

* * *

Harua’s fingers, light as a butterfly's wing, left trails of delicious electricity on Iroh’s skin. He struggled to keep his breathing even. Spirits help him, he wanted her. Needed her. But the fence around his abandon, badly battered, held for now. Her fingers found his cock, standing proudly out of its nest of dark hair. He moaned as she swirled a finger around the tip of his cock, wetting it in precome, then dragging it down the achingly sensitive underside.

Fortunately but unfortunately, she must have sensed how sensitive he was and left his cock alone. She ran one gently clawed hand down the inside of his thigh while she cupped his balls with the other. The sensation was as much comforting as arousing. Comforting to trust someone again, trust them enough to bare his most sensitive parts, mind and body, and have them handled with such infinitely delicate care.

It had been a long, long time since anyone had treated him as she was now. Not like a fragile, broken thing, but a warrior wounded too deeply to shake it off, but not deeply enough to die. Which was precisely what he was.

 _Harua, how do you always know exactly what I want?_ He cracked one eye and caught her in profile, running her hands reverently down his thighs. Her beatific smile and the lovelight in her doe-brown eyes nearly undid him. He looked away quickly. _If she looks at me with those eyes…_

He could not, _could not_ , let himself fall. Not into that deep, dark, warm, red-black ravine. Not into her, not into the twining of their hearts from which there was no untwining except the cold, bitter slice of a knife.

He sat up abruptly, startling the devotion off her face. _Good._   “On your back,” he murmured. Harua obeyed immediately, a grin spreading over her face. She welcomed him back into her with arms around his neck and legs around his hips. He thrusted slowly, gently, the orgasm sufficiently distant but ready to sprint back at the beckoning of Harua’s tight, warm, slick pussy. She panted and moaned, insistent hands winding in his hair and gripping legs pulling her to meet him with every thrust.

She paused, opened her eyes. The wildfire in them belied the timidity of her voice when she spoke.

“You can do it like you used to. You don’t have to be so gentle if you don’t want to,” she said, the fiftieth blush of the evening creeping up her cheeks.

Iroh blinked. _Like you used to._ Like a rutting animal?“Do you like it that way? Rough?”

She seemed incredibly interested in the curly salt-and-pepper hair on his chest. “I…I like it how you like it, Prince.”

“Be honest.”

The blush deepened.  “I—I am. I do. Like it rough. I like it when you… take me hard. It… makes me feel… good. Wanted. Desired. L-like I’m… truly yours.”

Iroh’s heart swelled with a curious mix of gratitude and guilt. “Truly, Harua?”

She nodded, her face red as a beet. “My pleasure is yours, Prince.”

 _Oh, Harua, I don’t deserve you._ He kissed her again. She squirmed and bucked her hips.

“Iroh. Now. _Please.”_

Her words, whispered through gritted teeth, fired him more than he could have dreamed. He did what he’d always wanted to do, and it was what she wanted too: he rammed into her hard, making her scream with pleasure so intense it was almost pain. Harua arched her back and rose to meet him at every thrust, carving her fingernails down his back, panting _yes yes yes yes yes._ The fierce, white-hot ball of need spun in his belly like a whirling dragon, shooting curls of fire and electricity through every muscle, every vein. Right before the dragon consumed him, he ripped himself from Harua and rose up on his knees, pumping his rampant cock as the dragon released its fire. It ripped through his core, out to the very edges of him, and made him cry out hoarsely. Again and again it pulsed, each one less intense than the last. The sensation faded and Iroh tried to will it back, but it left him like an exhale: soft, smooth and silent.

He heard Harua before he opened his eyes; heard the last throaty groans of her own orgasm. A wide grin split his face. _Like a rutting animal it is._ He reached over to grasp the hem of the sheet to wipe his seed off her belly, but she stopped him with a hand. With the first finger of her other hand she drew lazy patterns in the puddle of come on her soft belly and brought a wetted finger to her lips. She sucked it off her finger, licked her lips.

 “Delicious,” she said. “Want a taste?”

Iroh smiled, opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue. She dragged a freshly coated finger down his tongue and he tasted himself. He liked the way her pussy tasted much more, but he wasn’t in a place to deny her anything right now.

On impulse, he leaned down to her belly and slurped as much of his seed as he could into his mouth. She yipped, brows drawing down.

 _Patience, Harua,_ he would have said were his mouth not full. Instead, he positioned his mouth above hers and arched an eyebrow. Realization smoothed her face and she opened her mouth, smiling.

He dripped his seed into her mouth, the thin pearly string of it connecting them for a moment, then breaking from the tip of his tongue. “Mmmmm,” she said, swallowing. “My Prince.”

He chuckled, kissed her, rolled onto his side beside her. She turned to face him, snuggling into his chest. He rested his leg on top of hers, settled his hand on the generous swell of her hip and kissed the top of her head.

_My Harua, my home._

He said the words without saying them.


	2. Epilogue

Harua _hurls_ herself at the door when he knocks, catches herself. Takes a breath.

He takes her hand as he steps inside, and for a dizzy moment, she thinks he’ll go down on one knee. When he speaks, she almost _hears_ it, but his golden eyes are dim; they don’t match the moment’s joy, and the words aren’t _will you marry me._

“I’m leaving tomorrow.” 

Her heart drops into the pool of ice where her stomach used to be. 

The muscles of his jaw ripple under his well-kept silver beard. “My brother has exiled his son Zuko, my nephew. The boy is broken. And lost. He needs me.”

_“I_ need you.”

She shuts her mouth with an audible click of teeth, but the words skitter out before she can stop them.

“I’ve arranged a carriage for you in the morning. It’ll have everything you need: new clothes, books, food, seeds for a garden. I even had a new tea set made for you. You’ll go to the village of Hira'a. I know some people there; they’ll help you. Your cottage is fully furnished; the kitchen is stocked…” 

She screws her eyes and mouth shut and shakes her head harder and harder until her sleek black hair flies out of its bun and stings her face. The tears on her cheeks aren’t water; they are slivers of burning ice. “I don’t _need_ new clothes or a new home! I’m happy _here_! _Please_ , my prince, my _lord_ , don’t go.” She grasps his hand that had hurt her and soothed her and she’d loved every bit of both. She’d loved every bit of him, for every bit of time they’d had.

She opens her mouth but the words crowd at the back of her throat in a spiked lump that nearly makes her gag. 

“Harua. You deserve better than this. Than _me_. I shouldn’t have kept you here for so long… it wasn’t right.”

“No! You took me out of that hovel, away from those horrible men who just wanted an excuse to…you raised me up from farm orphan to–”

“To a prince’s _whore_ ,” Iroh barks, eyes flaring, then sighs and sags. “I’m not even a _prince_ anymore. But I am leaving tomorrow because my nephew no longer has a father and if he does not have someone to guide him, he’ll lose his way forever. I can’t let that happen. Do you understand?”

She wants to _hate_ the boy. Hating would be easier, but the future Fire Lord means more to Iroh, to the Fire Nation, to the world, than some tarted-up village orphan. “I understand,” she says, then folds to the floor and cries.

She is lifted up, laid down. Kissed: forehead, cheeks, mouth. Neck. He slips her kimono off. His breath is hot on the hollow of her collarbone. She arches her back. His heat is needful, _vital_ , spreading through her from his fingers between her legs, and she keens for him to fill the empty places that spread like holes in a windblown sail.

And he does, with a quiet grunt into her shoulder and a hand anchored to her hip. She clings to him, the need for pleasure secondary to the need for him, to reach into him and touch, one more time, his strong and steady-burning core. 

He breathes in blows like a groaning bull and she breathes _I love you_ every time he surges forward. She kisses _I love you_ into his mouth and claws _I love you_ into his back and wraps _I love you_ around him until he bellows and she screams and they both convulse and then she is warmed through and the sigh she exhales swirls thick and pearly white, but winter is two seasons away.

There will be empty hollows in her through which bitter winds will blow, but the _I love yous_ he growled into her, pressed onto her, will be stamped on her bones. And they will keep her warm.


End file.
